The Torn Souls: An Anthology of Prose About the Soviet War in Afghanistan (1979-1989)

Yesterday Was the Easiest Day!

There was a white dome-shaped ceiling over him. His head was buzzing, creating some obscure vibrations in his body. First, the pulsations were felt in his legs and then unbearable pain engulfed his entire body. Convulsively, he pushed himself up on his elbows. Another spasm threw his head back onto the pillow but even the softness of the pillow could not ease the horror which swept over him when he saw what was in front of him.

He was struck not so much by the absence of his legs as by the shapes of the soldier’s blanket which had been folded carefully to make an illusion of legs. The blanket was tucked in his bed and it was pulled back partially, to cover only what was left of the body of the wounded man after having been torn apart by the mine splinters. Below his thighs the blanket was untouched, with its folding having been shaped by helpful soldier’s hands. It was the integrity of the blanket that defiantly showed its indifference to the event which had happened. Now he occupied only half the space he was supposed to. The boundary of this reality took place at his bleeding stumps.

He did not completely realize the position he was in and he continued to perceive the world in the light of his old feelings, which had not been destroyed by a new reality. His non-existent, amputated legs ached. He was not concerned about the holes in his arm and stomach. The only thought that periodically came into his confused head was “I am alive. What for?” Having tried to objectively evaluate everything that had happened to him, he attempted to find a way out of the situation he was in.

His life was divided into two parts — before and after. In his head these two parts of his life, like the pieces of a broken mosaic, collided and created the chaos of a coloured kaleidoscope, picturing events and people. There was nothing like this before, nothing that could help him to determine a new understanding of his life. He felt intuitively that all necessary knowledge and skills were inside him, but the blast of a damned mine had turned everything upside down.

Time was the only resource available to him from which he could derive all his tenacity. He felt that he was in the very centre of the crater formed by the explosion and that a swift stream of time was dragging him into it. Swirling life was piercing his body and brain, but without dragging him along. It was clearly evident to him, that life, like a swift mountain stream, was flowing around the barrier of unshakable solidity, and not able to destroy it. That solidity of his consciousness had become a thing of the past.

He felt like a grain of sand which had already fallen in the sandglass of his fate. The intensity of recent months meant that the inevitable event had to happen and it had indeed happened.

At this stage he belonged to the past completely, like that fallen grain. He was waiting for fate to turn his sandglass again. Not having developed new reasoning, he used the old one. It was based on the invaluable soldier’s experience of survival, which had prompted common truth, and he could not abandon its practicality. He slowly extracted facts from the past and built a foundation from them; it was the pyramid base of his new consciousness.

Self-reliant and tough-minded as he was, seeing what happened to him as inevitable, was the way he faced his fate. He understood that any event was a matter of fortune, unforeseeable and unpredictable. But, continuing to analyze what had happened, he recognized that the course and spirit of the future were accidental, neither for the individual nor for the whole group. He came to the conclusion that, due to the free choices of individuals, such a course of events might, to tell the truth, either finish with a magnificent ending or create a risk of growing danger or death, but it could not be changed in meaning or direction.

A fact is something singular, something that was or will be in reality. The truth is something that does not need actual implementation in order to exist as a possibility. Fate is relevant to the facts. The truth is the connection between cause and action. Certainly, he knew it. That is why our life is connected with the facts, consists of the facts and is directed by the facts.

To learn something one needs time.

To become somebody one needs exactly this time.

…“If you follow the rules and the regulations, you will conquer and you will achieve honour and glory!” That was the message on the poster hanging on the wall opposite his bed. He fell asleep and woke up reading that slogan every day.

It was regular night drill. First, push-up and press-swing, then, gladiator fights and, finally, lights-out, like pipe dreams. Having gone mad because of fatigue and having dreamt about the possibility of sleeping no longer, he would stand and stare at the damned poster with the slogan in front of him.

“What are you thinking about, pal?” The sergeant’s question brought him back to the barracks at the present. “If you follow the rules and the regulations, you will conquer and you will achieve honour and glory!” — he shouted in response. The sergeant was looking into his eyes, rocking from heel to toe. “It is the easiest thing to do exactly what you are forced to do. It is more difficult to do the things you want to do, regardless of circumstances. That is why you should remember a simple rule, pal: ‘TO KNOW AND NOT TO ACT’ IS SIMILAR TO ‘NOT KNOW’! YOU CANNOT KNOW BUT YOU MUST LEARN FAST!!! SO DO NOT THINK ABOUT IT, JUST DO IT!!!” Obviously, the sergeant was pleased with such an ending. And then there was a long-awaited command “Lights out, pals!”.

It was evident that they would not be able to get sergeant’s such knowledge without rising from the ranks, from cadet to sergeant. That process made it possible to educate soldiers in a grand style, so they could assess their inner abilities, set targets, be trained consciously as individuals, and who therefore were ready for critical challenges which were set on the basis of the facts of the sergeants’ past life and not on the basis of some “ideal” abstractions of the regulations.

However, in order to do so well, it was necessary for them to have time and opportunity to learn new things. Moreover, these qualities were needed to acquire the strength necessary for the role. As soon as that strength had been acquired, the possibilities to use it appeared…

There were three months left until the end of the beginning…

If you see that the fight is useless you should fight with a doubled force.

…In any way, when they broke through to what was under the surface in life, he remembered what he had seen.

With tears all over their faces, covered with a thick layer of dust, two soldiers were not shy about their emotions. Taking turn, eight people were digging the foundation for a fence. It separated them from their friend who was wounded in the thigh and had fallen on the other side. Dukhs (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) were cutting them off with their fire, not giving any chance for the fence to be climbed over. The two who had tried to do it were injured. They threw the grenades. Using AGS (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor), they tried to support their wounded friend who was returning fire to the approaching ghosts. Men were following the fence with all that was in their hands.

He was amazed to see the kind of work they had managed to do; almost with bare hands, they had managed literally to gnaw through the fence.

When the hole in the fence base had exposed them, their friend was wounded in the right shoulder. Bleeding, losing consciousness, suffering an unbearable pain, the wounded man blew himself up with a grenade, the intensity too great. Having seen the futility of their attempts to take him alive, the ghosts retreated.

Even though they did not know if he was still alive, they were digging this hole. Their friend’s survival had lacked eight minutes. Five minutes after the grenade explosion the ghosts brought back the encirclement. Eight minutes after the grenade explosion the soldiers punched another hole in the fence base. Five minutes later another group joined them.

Now the two soldiers who had punched that hole were crying like children, unable to hide their emotions. Nevertheless, they dragged the unresponsive body of their friend into the damned hole, not recognizing the senselessness of it…

Lying in the hospital bed, he began to understand that the time of death entirely depended on how and when the vital force of a person was struck down. He saw that severe trauma could kill a person instantly, while others wounds, with less impact on a human, could cause dementia, loss of self-control, or disorganization of the will.

“To live, to live and TO LIVE must be the only inflexible decision.” In this sense he understood what had happened back then.

However, before equilibrium can be restored, it will initially be broken. And there will always be someone who will be the first.

“Now the most important thing is for you to learn to live without legs,” — said the surgeon, patting his shoulder encouragingly, when the bandages had been removed and his lungs had been exhausted from screaming. He understood that he had been the first.

The vast country was able to allocate very few resources for social rehabilitation. The reason was not lack of the resources, but lack of purpose. That is why it was not a priority.

It was the amputation (through the war) of opportunities for the wounded which transformed a human into his direct opposite. “Limiting manipulations” are cost-economical and very effective. The government knew it very well. What was the result of this amputation of opportunities? It gave the government the antithesis of a man, who had been sent to war.

Shortchanging the men in such a way, the state was able to manipulate them by means of benefits, after having deprived them of their own capabilities and goals. The goal is always inseparable from the instruments which are used to achieve it: each goal corresponds to the instrument and each instrument corresponds to the achieved goal. Now he had only one goal and the only instrument to achieve it — his prostheses as a symbol of human pain and patience. He understood that his life was just many, many days in which the pain would turn into infinity. When so much has been lost, try harder. If you do not know what to do, take a step forward. The war will show the plan; the main thing is to get into a fight, and then we will see!

“Fish wins tactically when it feels the taste of the worm, but loses strategically having been hooked”. (Haiku). “Never enter into the struggle that is imposed on you by your enemy; it is better to retreat in time rather than to step over your own dead body later.” (The prose of life).

The easiest day…

White walls, white sheets. Peace and quiet. He was dreaming about it during all his military service. Now he perceived these things quite differently.

The battalion commander sat nearby. The deputy commander in charge of policy, who had come with the battalion commander, brought a new parade uniform along with a vest, beret, insignia, two rucksacks filled with Kandahar pomegranates, figs, apples, and “CC” lemonade. “There are 500 cheques in the package. This is a gift from the battalion for you when you will be discharged from the hospital”, — the battalion commander said, putting a simple soldier’s envelope on the pillow. “What are you going to do in civil life, son?” the battalion commander asked. Trying to look confident, he could think of nothing, but answered: “I will make stools and sell them in the market.” Burning pain in his legs went to his confused head. The battalion commander abruptly raised the sheet which was wrapped around his foreshortened body and said: “If I learn that you are good-for-nothing in civil life, sergeant, I will come and kill you myself. Do you see? Remember my son, yesterday was the easiest day! Now is the beginning of a real war in your life…”

A plane was to arrive in the morning. The company personnel have already stocked him up and covered his stomach and arm with bandages. The battalion commander and the deputy commander in charge of policy have just left him.

He did not realize completely the current situation, continuing to perceive the world in a light of old sensations before having been destroyed by new realities. Non-existent amputated legs hurt. The holes in his arm and stomach did not trouble him. In his contused head one single thought periodically surfaced: “Yesterday was the easiest day, indeed!”

Soul

To be honest, I don’t know how to put the whole story across to you. It started seventeen years ago. “Soul” was his nickname and I found it a good “moniker”. This story will make you sure of it — though it is hard for me to relate the story by strictly keeping to its chronology, I will try to tell you what really happened.

The list of various wounds and severe injuries which one could easily get, without leaving the brigade’s position, could cover many more pages than my story. It was possible to get into the most unbelievable situation if you were not a sissy boy; it was quite possible to live through it and to cope with it.

Soul always landed on his feet. One of his funniest qualities he had, was an amazing pantophagy (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor): he could eat literally everything that grew on the land, and it was very difficult to define the basis of his rations. There was one more quality which distinguished Soul from the rest — his unusual flexibility, the ability to adjust to any conditions, any difficulties.

I clearly remember that operation.

It was a good warm night for ambushes — with moonlight and gentle contours, dark enough to be concealed and bright enough to differentiate all the shadows, pits and bumps on the ground, which still retained the warmth of a July day. That night had a lesson in store for us. A dream embraces a tired person at night, so that he does not even notice it. With wide open eyes, we slipped into oblivion for a while, during which time we continued walking mechanically, but with our attention switched off. Such fatigue is a usual phenomenon for drivers, so there is nothing attractive in night driving, especially along impassable roads. Driven by some power, we thought that we were flying between heaven and earth, now and then almost running into APCs (see “Terminology and Glosssary” — Editor).

Everything happened at lightning speed, before I knew where I was. Spotting with a night vision device a huge hole about fifty meters ahead on the route, which was filled with moonlight shadow, our driver slammed on the brakes. At a speed of forty kilometers per hour, we almost fell into it. Soul fell from the APC at the moment of that sudden stop. Like a soccer ball, he easily flew over the hood of the carrier. One could say he was lucky; he escaped with bruises and scratches. But you should have seen the face of our sergeant, Beck. To tell the truth, we knew full well what Beck was about to say at that moment. “To kill you now or to give you another chance?”. His eyes were gleaming with a mixture of pretend violence and crafty goodness. It was Beck’s catchphrase. In fact, he remained indifferent to the successful landing of Soul. The APC was jammed with ammunition. The boys on board froze at his every word — all these belonged to him, he was like an owner of this boundless sandy beach without any sea.

Being slightly disoriented from the two hour drive in a completely unfamiliar area, we were staring at Soul — indeed, he seemed to be the reason we stopped. Tattered, covered with dust, he was nervously adjusting his famous sun-hat, where the well known to everybody in the company Russian word “DUSHA” was written with a bleaching powder referring to a diminutive derivative of “Dusha” from his name. A round head with a face similar to young Lenin from the October badge was looking up from under this sun-hat.

Apart from the sun-hat, another distinguishing feature of Soul was his eyes, always wide-open, emitting a sincere child’s interest in everything happening around. His ingeniousness just killed us now and then. He could do almost everything without having a clue how something should be done. He could live quietly with minimum knowledge about the laws of the surrounding world.

To survive in Afghan, a person has to arm himself with the patience of an angel. I had been trained already in this regard, but sometimes anxiety gripped me. Soul is another matter; he treated everything that was happening to him as if it were not his life, but a rehearsal. It seemed that he was just storing the received skills in order to use them one day, when it was time for real life.

The fall from the APC was not the most terrible ordeal for him. During those nine months which he had spent with the division, he had lived through almost everything. Three factors always helped him: luck, occasion and flair. Now for sure this flair was whispering: “Calm down, do not hurry”.

I was sitting on the bonnet of the truck; all the others were standing in a semicircle at some distance from Beck, representing a living decoration for the action that was about to happen, or perhaps shielding this ridiculous scene from any casual viewer. Beck examined Soul from top to toe with that weird look of his which I hated so much. What was to follow was a regular scenario with a rare innovation. I felt sick. “Just do not say… ‘the helmet’”, — I was begging Beck in my mind.

“Put on the helmet”, — said Beck, almost whispering. Nothing could force Soul to not blindly obey the order. He was so spoiled by his luck that he could not understand why he was given that order. More than once he had to stand like this in front of the sergeant. In his understanding, he had no reason to hurry, and in general, he just carried out his duty. But I am sure that from gradual awareness of what was happening, he felt much worse after the fall. Beck returned to the carrier and took the grenade thrower’s cartridge. Soul did not watch his step: his eyes filled with alarm; he was riveted to the RPG (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) in Beck’s hands.

It was like a shot. With all his might Beck hit the helmet on Soul’s head with the cartridge. Soul managed to keep his balance although his face was twisted with pain. But in a second he fell to the ground, without making a sound. Those who surrounded him kept silent. Soul quickly came to himself and with a thoughtful look, which conveyed his agony, followed our reaction.

The dembels (see “Terminology and Glosssary” — Editor) were climbing on the armored vehicle one by one — the punishment was over.

“So, what now?” — I asked Beck, after we pulled Soul inside the troop-carrier. He made no reply; having pushed me away with his shoulder, he threw his body on the weaponry with a powerful jerk. I noticed that he was sullen, as before. Why was he like that, while all the others were filled with fear and disapproval of his deed? Sometimes it was hard to understand Beck, and now was a time when it was better to leave him alone. “Well, you never can tell. The night is not over yet”, he noted dryly, when I took my place next to him. At that moment each of us was lost in our own thoughts.

Many boarding houses make preparations beforehand for the “Afghans” who are arriving. Before their arrival, the administration puts the place in order: the new cushioned furniture is hidden in the storerooms; its place is taken by old sofas, battered chairs and tables. All carpets and table lamps are removed. The staff is instructed in case of emergencies. And then comes the long-awaited day of arrival of the “Afghans”, who, accompanied by an easily recognizable sound of the clinking of glasses, arrive in a dignified manner, sedately carrying the weight of state awards and benefits. Unlucky old-aged veterans, not knowing what to expect, find themselves in the situation of hiding in their rooms as the only way to get through this horror invasion.

By the evening a boarding house turns into an arena of military operations, the base of crash courses in survival. Along the corridors, with a wild noise and a sound of prostheses and crutches, the troops are rushing to and fro: people unite in groups according to their divisions, regiments, and brigades, and provinces where they had served, according to their participation in joint operations, according to hospitals, according to the nature of their wounds, and finally, according to groups of disability. If you go through the floors, you can see people hugging and kissing in lobbies and bars. The meetings are celebrated in every room: you can open any door without knocking, and everyone will be pleased to pour you a glass or two, sincerely offering to share the joy of meeting with a brother-soldier.

The next morning, before you can open your eyes, you are horrified to think of a long and painful return to the interrupted conversation with new and old friends you were socializing with the day before; and having being buried in a pillow, you begin to listen to steps in the corridor. Sometimes you just have to say to yourself: “Enough of that! Go to hell!” You want to shut yourself in the room and do something enjoyable, for instance — to read, listen to music and at last to dream. It is quite possible that in an hour you will be lucky enough to fall asleep, and in a few days you will escape from this hell and forget your friends of the nights.However, the lucky ones are few. In most cases, the struggle is prolonged, because it is not so easy to get rid of awakened memories. Insomnia itself is not as terrible as the memories associated with it and as a result, “war cartoons”: nightmares. You are calmed down by only one thing: you are not alone in your torments.

If you come here and concentrate only on this, you can lose your good health in a short time. Let us say, the question for me is not idleness. One day as part of one of those “landings” I happened to be in a boarding house not far from Moscow. Having dived head first into the above-described atmosphere that reigned in a decent society of serious people for those who came here to be treated for injuries and to be returned to a normal condition, I found myself not ready to face my past.

The main responsibility of the administration was to make patients feel relaxed and rested, so that life became a bed of roses starting from the very first day. Well, we came here because we wanted to be well. The sharing of “war cartoons” was an unspoken taboo. It was important to not stand out from the normal rhythm of life and to not avoid one’s familiar circle of friends. I had already known that those people who recovered faster helped others who were struggling in a similar situation. Therefore, there was one fellow I chose for my own course of treatment.

He looked so skinny. He was dressed in a plain tracksuit, which together with his jeans made up his entire wardrobe. The impression of gauntness was enhanced by his seemingly external inaccessibility. This fellow obviously had not managed to objectively assess his budget for the rest of period, having brought here just what was left from his monthly salary or pension. A couple of times I tried to approach him, taking a seat next to him, but he showed a demonstrable independence. It is quite common behavior of those who have been faced with mockery and undeserved reproaches from relatives and loved ones. Most likely he had his own reasons for becoming an “iron man”, and one day he had made a decision about living as courageously as possible.

But still, it was not difficult for me to draw him out. As soon as it became clear that we had been in the same brigade for the same years, I asked him umpteen questions about things that were hard not know if he was really there at that time. His sluggish, vague answers disappointed me and settled doubts in me as to their veracity. He remembered the location of the military unit, knew some details from brigade life, but he absolutely did not remember the people with whom he had said he had shared the difficulties of service. Apparently, hoping somehow to justify his strange forgetfulness, he started to tell something about his life. His speech was incoherent, and his diction left much to be desired.

Having armed myself with patience, I listened to his story. He used to be a soldier, but he was wounded and a couple of years after that he developed a strange disease. He began to lose weight; his memory, hearing and sight began to worsen. And then it got even worse: there were problems with his right foot. Strange bouts of pain in his back began to bother him, after which his foot completely failed. He married a woman with a child. The boy did not consider him as a father, he despised him for his weakness. The problems with his head prevented him from staying on a well-paid job and he started repairing TVs at home, but the number of orders was constantly decreasing. He had to now come here for his health.

Understanding the problem and trying to be an attentive listener, I asked politely about his wound. His answer disappointed me completely. “Grenade struck my head”, he said. If I had not known people with similar wounds, I might have believed him. But he did not know where to draw the line. Continuing to listen to his story, I involuntarily began to overhear a conversation the next table, where the helicopter pilots were sitting. The familiar word “Kalat” in their conversation made me strain my ears.

“When we had flown there, they were already being pelted with launchers. The tank and the APC were already burning. We just made a couple of sorties, and there was already a commander with a launcher-wound in his head. They all were screaming on the “Romashka”, demanding evacuation. I looked down: they were under fire, the “box” was burning, and they were like mice thrashing about in a ditch!” For the first time I heard the impressions of a man who had taken a detached view of a battle in which I had also taken part: the comparison with mice shocked me; you could have knocked me down with a feather.

By noon the next day we were trapped.

After receiving an order, our team, consisting of two incomplete platoons, left the zone of ambush actions in three cars and went down to a concrete road. We had to go as a patrol accompanied by a column that was carrying cotton from India. Outpacing the column, we moved close to a Afghan tank, which had been given to us for support. The Afghan commando unit was reinforced by the fourth company of our battalion.

The commander said: “Halt!”. We stopped. At the head of the patrol there was a tank and after it you could see our three “boxes”.

A small village was divided into two parts by the concrete road 500 meters away. There was an irrigation ditch on the left, with two dryers on the left, and on the right there was a garden, surrounded by a heavy adobe wall. The concrete road led to a blown-up bridge. The silence was alarming.

The patrol team was on the dirt road. The steep slope of the hill met the blade of the concrete road and limited our maneuvering to the left. A deep ditch was at our right, and behind it, there were deep ravines that went down to the river valley. Our position was not the best. The commander had already decided to send one carrier ahead to gain a dominant position at the top of the hill.

But as soon as our APC had moved to the tank that gave way to us, a launcher hit from the nearest ravine on the right. The fire stream pierced the armour of the tank between its wheels. The stored ammunition exploded immediately. The multi-ton bulky machine jumped on the spot. The turret jerked and slowly rode up. The pillar of flame broke away from the open-top hatch and the gunner, who was sitting behind the machine-gun, was thrown out on the burning concrete road.

It seemed to me that the gunner’s flight lasted endlessly and in absolute silence. The world and time itself gave way to the triumph of death. Perhaps due to the effect of dopamine, which rushed into my blood, everything that was going on around suddenly was filled with its own rhythm and started to live its own life. In fact, the world broke down into many event-fragments, each of which consisted of a pause, in order to give the body an opportunity to react, and for the brain to become aware of what was happening…

… A bearded man in a waistcoat is slowly emerging from the ditch and then, in cold blood, he fired a short round at the writhing, burning Afghan man. On the right, a hundred meters from us, profiting from our confusion, four mujahedeen (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) ran across the road to the ravines carrying guns. On my left Soul was trying to untie the knapsack full of grenades and their fuses. His hands were shaking, his lips were firmly set, and his eyes were fixed on the mujahedeen running across the road. He did not notice the loud pings of bullets striking the concrete road which ricocheted in his direction. Completely at a loss, I was hiding behind the armour of our APC. The tank exploded five meters away from it. I was on the armour, when the blast wave shook the machine frame, and it was strong enough to blow me off instantly.

Only when I felt a violent stream of air whistling out of a tire punctured by a bullet, did my wits came back to me and I woke up, conscious of the familiar sounds of chaos; and events began to turn at an immense speed.

Our carrier received two grenade hits within fifteen minutes. The first shot hit the spare wheel on the turret, wounding the gunner and the driver. The gunner fell out of the carrier through the side hatch. The driver, trying to direct the carrier away from the destroyed tank, began to zigzag to the narrow traffic lane of the concrete road, wisely keeping away from the mined track. The mujahedeen had come so close that we were throwing grenades like stones at each other. Tension in this battle was so high that fairly often from both sides un-cocked grenades flew: they were gathered up, the pins were pulled out and all of them were returned to the owners.

The only protection from bullets and bullet splinters were immovable APCs on the road which were abandoned by us. The close proximity of the enemy made their large-caliber machine-guns useless. In this cocktail of screams, shots and grenade explosions, the commander made an attempt to get into the carrier to help the shell-shocked driver, whose position inside prevented us from being able to hide behind its armour. All our attempts to stop the convulsive movement of the heavy eight-wheeled frame with the butts of rifles on the armour and our shouting yielded no results. Hardly had the commander put his hands over the hatch’s clamp, when the second fatal grenade shot resounded.

I was there; I just heard a loud clap. Then the five-meter APC’s trunk jerked and almost simultaneously the armour cracked like an eggshell and hit the company commander head. His powerful, well-muscled body was tossed into the ditch, straight to Soul’s feet. By this time Soul’s face became so inflated, that his head seemed twice as large.

The commander was thrashing about the ground, shaking his head so that the ingot had turned into a solid blood clot with hair clumps and only one miraculously saved eye with a furiously rotating pupil. That was horrible! At such moments a man is guided by his instincts rather than by his mind. Soul rushed at the commander, pressing him down with his body, while the others were frozen as if turned into stone. The commander, trying to get rid of Soul, was shaking his smashed head from side to side. We finally managed to bandage his head, but I do not know how. Somebody was vomiting nearby. The battle continued.

The carrier took fire — the red-hot fragments set aflame the barricade we had made out of mattresses on the zinc ammunition load. There was a wounded driver enveloped in pungent smoke in the vehicle’s interior. In a couple of minutes the ammunition load would detonate. While we, being busy with the commander and regrouping, were running between cars and creeping over the ditch, Soul had pulled out the driver who was riddled with splinters and, ignoring the shelling, covered the fire in the carrier with sand.

After the commander and the driver had been evacuated, Beck took command. We got to know on the jabbering walkie-talkie that the commander died aboard the helicopter.

The back-up arrived astonishingly fast. Our battalion, consisting of two platoons and the fourth company that joined us, with the support of Afghan commandos and two undamaged tanks, made the mujahedeens retreat to alternate positions prepared beforehand. Having organized the all-round defense, we decided to take the initiative in the battle.

The garden surrounded by the heavy adobe wall, the concrete bridge blown up at the end of the kishlak (see “Terminology and Glassary” — Editor), the narrow concrete road with the disabled, burned tank, — all of these came together in the bright and smooth color of a sunset. We decided to dislodge the enemy from his positions with a bold attack. The commandos went in the center of the attacking line, and two of our platoons were on the flanks. The fourth company was preparing r the attack at the garden. The sun went downrapidly, leaving us no time to adjust our strategy.

The attack misfired. The commandos fell back, taking with them two dead and three wounded fighters. We retreated too, not having managed to make it to the right flank of the enemy. Our flimsy advantage was destroyed by the enemy’s heavy-caliber machine gun, which came from the left flank.

During the roll call after the failed attack, we learned that Beck and Soul, who with their group had attacked the left flank from where the mujahedeen’s machine-gun had rained us with fire, had gone.

We had to report that to the battalion commander.

— “Hectare-4, Hectare-4. This is Mars. Do you copy? Over.”

— “Mars, Mars, This is Hectare-4, read you. I’m in the last position on the enemy’s left flank. We are ready to attack. Over”, — Beck reported the situation calmly.

— “Hectare-4.This is Mars. You are ready to support the attack. Roger that. How many of you are there, son? Over”. The commander was definitely trying to make sense of the current situation.

— “Mars, This is Hectare-4. There are two of us here, just two; we grabbed our “samovar” (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor). Ready to support the attack with fire”, it was obvious that Beck was flying into a rage.

The commander made a decision.

— “Calm down, son. ‘Elephants’ (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) are going to strike from two barrels. Try to adjust the fire. Over”. We passed “Get ready to attack” down the line.

It was beautiful. In gathering dusk two tanks at great speed, simultaneously turning around, lept out into the position for the straight shot. Just the look of their maneuver made our hearts beat faster, the dose of adrenalin made our knees tremble and our heads spin. The tanks stopped sharply, and at the same time, seemingly without preparation, fired a volley towards the left flank. A cloud of dense dust, almost black in the coming dusk, covered the enemy. At this moment the walkie-talkie began to speak with Soul’s stammering voice: “М-а-а-r-s, М-а-а-а-r-s, th-i-s i-s S-o-u-l… Shots landed 15 meters from us. Sergeant is wounded. Th-i-si-s S-o-u-l, over!” Everybody froze, waiting for the command. “Calm down, son, no shots anymore. Support the attack, over!” we could sense in the commander’s voice a note of suppressed laugher. Then there was a command “Forward!”. Almost in full darkness, torn by our tracing fire, we rushed in silence upon the mujahedeen’s positions. The machine gun opened from the left flank, but Soul covered us. The mujahedeen abandoned their position and retreated with no resistance.

“That’s the place!”. At the next table, breaking the taboo, helicopter pilots bent over the map which had been taken by someone. Without ceremony I interrupted the man I was talking with, and approached their table. Now, so many years after the company commander’s death, I felt tears welling up in my eyes, but I was not ashamed of them. “That’s the place,” — I said to myself after twelve years — “look, here’s the place where I was shot in my head by a grenade launcher”. Suddenly, my companion stabbed his finger right at the point our group had passed just twenty-four hours before the mujahedeen’s ambush!

“Hey, man, give me more details about the grenade launcher’s attack on your head. “I finally began to grasp the meaning of what was going on. “That was the sergeant who gave me a punch with the grenade launcher,” — he said, looking at me with the eyes of an old sick and tired man.

“Soul, is this you? That’s impossible!” I realized I had repeated these words already a few times, feeling utter disbelief. Some onlookers formed a group around us.

“Yes, I’m Soul. I am Soul!” This thin, exhausted man wept like a child.

We dislodged the mujahedeen with an impetuous push, grabbed their position and combed the garden in the complete dark. Nearly without losses — two men from the fourth company were wounded and one was killed. We bumped into Soul when he was carrying Beck to our position. Beck shook his head, covered with flour-like dust, and moaned. It was dark and we were blinded because of flashes from our guns; but it was impossible not to notice a mad glint in Soul’s eyes and a shiny white smile on his swollen and heavily bruised face. He stammered and shivered from head to foot, but his enviable health had let him hold out till the end of the battle.

Later on, the grenade launcher’s hit on our carrier was officially seen as the cause of Souls’ trauma. His report to the commander became a joke and turned him into a brigade legend. He was awarded the rank of sergeant and was recognized as an equal among experienced soldiers. With the natural chronometer in his head turned off by by Beck’s blow, his world had became frozen, giving him his own particular rhythm in life.

Beck was transferred to the reserve in the Soviet Union, and he never came back to us.

The commander was posthumously awarded the “Order of Wartime Red Banner”, although he was recommended for the “Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union”.

Five men in the company were awarded the “Red Star” for that battle: Soul, the wounded driver and Beck among them. Seven others were awarded the “Medal for Bravery”.

The day before my departure I prepared presents for Soul, having shown great diligence and care in their choice. He had become a kind of special person to me. I had become attached to him, spending all my free time with him, describing, at his request, different events of our friendship. I wanted to say goodbye to Soul before the departure, and I was going to invite him for dinner. I felt sad — I was short of parting words.

The receptionist, who always knew everything in the boarding house, stopped me:

— Sorry, but he left. He checked out of his room, packed and left.

— I saw him an hour ago, and we arranged the meeting.

— Are you from Room 301? He asked me to hand over an envelope to you.

Taking the envelope, I went back to my room. I found a photo inside. It was a picture of our company, all together in our smoking-room. There was a little question mark above almost everyone’s head, put by Soul’s hand. But the marks above my head, the heads of the commander, Beck and Soul himself were crossed out. On the back side there was a recent inscription: “If I forget you — forget me”.

And finally I got it. He said no good-byes, while expressing so much at the same time. For Soul the picture was a symbol of his lost past, and the search for it made sense of his life. Slowly, piece by piece, he collected a mosaic of fragmentary memories, patching the flaws created in his mind by war. Memory about the past was disappearing, but my stories about it helped him to clarify the present.

His life was arranged as a game, in which the war set terms for several figures on the playing board. A figure continued to live, to participate in the game, if there were at least two or three other ones next to it. If there were fewer of them, the figure would die because of solitude. If there were more, it would die because of the overcrowded board. And another move, which could give some sense to the present figure’s state, was possible only for a few, limited to three sides of the square. Before time stopped for Soul, the figures of Beck and the commander were swept off the board, although they were the ones that marked his position on it.

Soul was slowly dying until I filled empty squares around him, giving us a chance to continue his violent game. And, in reward for this, having sensed my pre-farewell embarrassment and all I suffered at that moment, he left my life in the same manner he came into it: occasionally, and all of a sudden.

All of this going back in time tired me. I suddenly woke up with the feeling that there was someone next to me. I quickly turned on the light, but there was no one in the room. I was not able to fall asleep again: the fever of memories held me captive again.

The Unfinished Letter

“Hello, my dear brother,

As I promised, I am writing this letter to you to let you know that I am okay. I do not work but receive my pension. My health is not failing me so far…”

The page with squared lines from a student’s notebook was covered with child-like letters: some letters were big, some were uneven and roundish, but it seemed all of them accumulated energy and diligence in each stroke of the author’s pen. I wanted to see who was the author, but forgot where I placed the envelope; and the sender’s name was also absent in the end of the letter. The author of this letter was definitely relying on my memory, but… after some guesses as to his identity, I decided that the author eventually might turn up in my life some day; this is why the letter was placed in a drawer of my desk.

A week later, my life had a rapid turn. Then every 3–4 months, I had several unexpected transformations in my life resulting in changes to addresses and places to live. This letter followed me in all the changes that occurred in my life, moving from one notebook to another until it found its rest in a folder with my personal documents, adding another puzzle for my memory.

Now, five years later, flipping through the pages of my diaries and looking at documents, I unexpectedly remembered the sender. My memory had played a cruel joke with me — I should have immediately guessed who was the author of this letter.

Feverishly scanning the page written in unsettled childishly looking handwriting, I scold myself for the impassiveness with which this little message from the past was treated. I was still hoping to find an address…

…It is Sunday, November 20, 1983, Leningrad, 442nd District Clinical Military Hospital. Our ward has only a window from which we see a trolleybus stop and some part of the street’s intersection.

Looking at us through the window, the peaceful bustle of Suvorovsky Prospekt, with its 3 colored traffic lights and the hissing doors of trolley buses, drives us mad with its inaccessibility for us.

Our ward looks like a pencil case with six people in it. We all ended up here after flying from one district hospital to another, we arrived in the same airplane — it was the flight from Tashkent.

Between us — six people in the ward — we have only one set of legs: Sanych — the ensign of the 345th separate parachute Bagram regiment — has the right leg, and Boris — a young lieutenant from Kunduz — has the left one.

The four other patients are not mobile. Two of us — Serega and myself from 177th regiment — have no legs. The third one — Lesha from the 180th regiment — can move only his head because everything else is encased in a plaster cast. The fourth one — Vitya from Anava — has no problems with his legs, but has big troubles with his hands and head — this is why we do not consider him as a walking man. So, this is a valuation of the “healthy” people in our ward…

Sanych and Boris, both have crutches and their hands are constantly occupied. How much can you carry in your teeth? Not much, I guess. For them it is difficult enough to hold themselves on these crunches; on top of this difficulty, Sanych’s left leg is shrouded with the Ilizarov’s apparatus which is also tied to his neck — this is why he hops forward with an awkwardly, and I would say, a kind of indecently protruding leg.

For us, recumbent patients, the internal news has been delivered by the passing patients. Usually, we ask the same question “How are things?” and we always get the same answer — “As usual”. As for the sources of the news from outside of the world, we have newspapers and grumblings of baba Polya (baba refers to an old age of women — Editor) who comes twice a day to do cleaning in our ward.

Vitya is always cooking something in his “birdhouse” (a head — Editor). He has a real hole in his head that has been fixed with a metal plate together with a piece of his own scalp. He has a weird habit — he likes to pronounce, suddenly and loudly, some shocking thoughts cooked up in his head. This is a result of his concussion. It is better to support him at such moments by asking questions on the topic, otherwise he starts to get nervous and will be running around the hospital in search for any communication until he will be caught and brought back to the ward. To be honest, Vitya, should be placed in another, more suitable for him, special place, but the reason for not signing him into a psychiatric hospital is related to the problem with his hands, or to be exact, stumps of his hands.

His wounds have already healed, but after amputation of the hands, the postoperative swelling has not yet come down. Little can be done to help this situation — only waiting and continuing all medical procedures in order to get ready for his prosthetic preparation.

Unfortunately, Vitya’s contused head does not give a break to himself and also to the whole ward.

Vitya did not dodge a grenade explosion. Ambushed somewhere in Panjshir together with his unit, he courageously covered the rest of his group by focusing the enemy’s fire to himself. This happened suddenly; and thanks to his immediate reaction, Vitya saved many lives as well as took the lives from others.

The explosion from the grenade interrupted Vitya’s solo performance. But the doukh (a military slang for identifying enemies during the war in Afghanistan — Editor) did not kill him. Not reaching its target, the reactive grenade fell into a stone mound next to Vitay. The blast destroyed everything: Vitya’s submachine gun, his right shoulder and head; his right eye broken open from a splinter. His hands were torn off, his elbows were also gone. This flash from the explosion together with a pile of rubble stood up like a wall in front of Vitya’s eyes, and sure enough mixed all thoughts in his head that affected him for the rest of his life.

We understand him. To express or splash our emotions can be a huge relief, and each of us has the right to do so, in your own individual way.I found my way. This way is old enough, simple and cheap. It costs as much as the price of a ball pen together with a pupil’s notebook. What you have to do is to remember how to write the letters. Seems to me, this way is more effective for describing any unpleasant experiences and relieving your emotion compared to crying on somebody’s shoulder in the ward. Also by writing down events, you have a chance to interconnect and analyze these events again; this is why for me, writing a dairy became more effective. However, I can guess, that my colleagues in the ward, may have a different opinion on this matter.

My notes reflect a horror of my nightmares, my life’s thoughts, and it describes events that have occurred in our ward. My notes help me. I was writing these notes at night. In the morning I re-read them and get horrified: if this is happening in my head, then what is going on in the head of Vitya?

Today Sanych got a visit from his wife. I did not think that this “Rambo” of Airborne Forces can be such a clown.

Oleg Timofeevich, a deputy head of the hospital’s third department, entered our ward together with the nice young woman who had tearful eyes. As soon as Sanych saw these guests, he jumped out of the bed and rushed around, searching for a chair, overturning everything in his path.

He has the Elizarov’s apparatus that was fastened to him due to a complex fracture of his leg — it was the consequences of a fragmentation wound. This wound Sanych received whilst he was going to have a cigarette; he stood behind the armor of the ALV (Amphibious Landing Vehicle — Editor) in the bush somewhere in Charikarskaya. As soon as he made the first puff, the grenade launcher fired a shot behind him. The reactive grenade rammed the cannon of the ALV and ricocheted towards his leg — it is a usual sequences in this war. But, can you imagine, wishing to save his wife’s heartbreak, Sanych, whilst he was at the hospital in Bagram, wrote to her saying that he fell ill with cholera!? He warned her that his treatment would take a couple of months, and then he would be at home for a well-deserved sick leave. His poor wife became confused from a combination of her own feelings — a sadness regarding the serious illness and the joy to see her husband on his sick leave. So, this faithful woman began to make inquiries about the severity of her husband’s illness; and when the picture of all consequences of her husband’s disease was clearly defined, she sent a letter-instruction to the hospital in Bagram.

We can give a credit to the efficiency and sensitivity of the medical staff from the hospital in Bagram, who informed the agitated wife that her husband admitted in the Clinical Military Hospital, building number 442, on Suvorov Avenue at Leningrad.

The experienced officer’s wives, who were the members of a women’s committee of the division from where Sanych was sent to the “special mission”, learned that he was transferred on a plane from Tashkent to Leningrad together with a group of seriously wounded soldiers. Nobody made any enquiries about the diagnosis — they believed Sanych.

In accordance with the code of faithfulness for a woman whose husband at war, his wife left her children at home and rushed to Leningrad (nowadays is St Petersburg — Editor) to save her husband from cholera. At the hospital, the unfortunate woman was informed that her husband was placed into the third department of the hospital, which has purulent surgery patients. Now, can you imagine what she was feeling during these terrible minutes after learning where her husband was? Instead of a dying husband, she was on the way to meet a healthy looking fellow who was rushing around the ward with some kind of vulgar fracture in his leg?

It was a strange scene: two of us, legless, are in the beds, Lesha as a one huge plaster doll with a talkative head on the top; a gaunt Boris, with his transparent skin, holding the crutches, sits on a bed; an emotionally waiving Vitya with his circumcised hands; a stern face of Oleg Timofeyevich is somewhere in the background with a tearful wife of Sanych, and Sanych himself runs towards her crashing everything on the way.

The scene was so emotionally heavy, that the dearest guest suddenly fired off the most famous word which will be not allowed in books, but will be written on fences. No doubt, it is better to give free rein for your emotions with no witnesses around; otherwise your reputation will be damaged forever. But there is some time when you simply could not do in any other way.

The first week after the celebration of New Year has passed. Sanych was discharged to the hospital closest to his residence with a parole of honour to return the Ilizarov’s apparatus later. He went home with his wife before the holidays. His bed was given to another guy from the local construction battalion. He is from Uzbekistani, and his name is Shiraz.

What had happen to him was unreal. During the break, Shiraz sat on the non-working sawmill and freely swinged his feet until one of them accidentally touched the switch and turned the machine on. I can hardly comprehend how it occurred (perhaps somebody helped him with this machine), but the fact is — his Muslim ass got unlucky, and his rotten fate put a tremendous cross below his waist, outlining the lower part of his body. In the hospital, this veteran from a building battalion — let’s to be honest — did not improve his luck: the graduate from the Baku Combined Arms Command School, Lieutenant Boris, personally got interested in Shiraz and initiated the voluntary training for him to obey commands.

The transparency of Boris’ skin has already gone, leaving the yellowness and the unhealthy sparkling of his large black eyes for the most difficult days. Boris painfully goes through all that has happened to him; and Shiraz became just the lightning rod, through which the young officer’s self-esteem can be released due to a lack of time to train his own personnel. But as we say, diamonds cut diamonds.

The demeanour “I do not understand Russian” of the first year of service, has changed to “I’m not doing the job, because I have been around” during the second year of service in the construction battalion. This is why, Boris included in his educational program, tailored for Shiraz, almost everything, with a field training exception, of course; for some reasons, absence of this important component in crafting a real soldier was very upsetting for Boris. Unfortunately, after many futile drills that were applied to Shiraz, our lieutenant eventually concluded that his failure in a military service was a logic consequence.

Already on the third week of his military service in Afghanistan, Boris had a chance to rise himself in the eyes of the battalion commander. During an ambush on his BMP (Armored infantry vehicle — Editor), he “cornered” the enemies’ car “Semurg” and destroyed it with his DShK (a large-calibre machine gun Degtyarev/Shpagin — Editor). Boris honestly reported to a battalion commander on such godsend booty and fiercely defended the catch from attacks of the marauding attempts of his soldiers. He was very proud that their “suasion” to conduct a “shuravy control” (the slang originated by Afghani people with a reference to marauding extractions of all valuables from the dead bodies conducted by the Soviet soldiers) before the arrival of the battalion commander got zero result. Well, the battalion commander arrived soon.

He looked with an undisguised disgust at the Boris’ DShK, the disfigured car and the dead bodies of enemies, and with a cynical calmness ordered his bodyguards to collect all valuables: money, watches, valued personal belonging and weapons. The harvest collection was conducted in front of the angry soldiers from the Boris’ unit. Having collected rich baksheesh (here is something extra obtained free — Editor), the battalion commander flew away and left Boris alone to face his soldiers enraged with such injustice and they completely lost faith in the young lieutenant.

But fate gave Boris a new chance. Next time, when he was escorting the column, he managed to regain a respect from the soldiers as well as from the battalion commander. Being not yet tired from a devastation and desperation and not fully fed up from what was happening around him, Boris closely followed the instructions and attentively observed the surroundings from the optics of his gun,. He was the first one who spotted a girl standing up between rocks — she was throwing back her hair with an elegant movement of her head. Boris was fascinated by her beauty, but deeply shocked when he saw a grenade launcher in her hands. Who could guess that this elegant girl is actually an Italian shooting instructor, about who, and her professional skills, he learned about a few months ago from a radio interception?

The Boris’ cry — “What are you doing, bitch?!!” heard by everyone in the area — was not only a comment to her throwing a grenade into the column’s head machine, but also was taken as a coded command to repel an enemy’s attack. The column returned a sea of fire.

Still looking at the Italian beauty through the crosshairs of the optical sight, Boris coldly knocked her down on the first try and collected the prize that was authorised by the KGB counterintelligence unit for her capture — “Order of the Red Star”.

Unfortunately, this did not save the column from a total disaster and Boris from troubles. His IFV (an infantry fighting vehicle — Editor) ran into a land mine. How Boris managed to fly out from the hatch, I still cannot comprehend. But the fact is — out of a whole crew of his IVF, he was the only survivor, maybe to tell us about a beautiful girl from Italy who once upon a time instructed how to shoot a grenade launcher.

Last week, Boris as a convalescent patient was transformed to another department — the traumatology that was located in a different building. His bed was removed and only five people were left in our ward. Although a number of wounded soldiers from Afghanistan keep coming, nobody was placed in our ward.

Imbued with the meaning of international duty, Shiraz conscientiously performs the responsible task of bridging Vitya with the bottle shop located on the other side of the hospital’s fence. Doctors have long forgotten how he got here and how he got wounded. One day, when he returned from his routine bandaging with a mountain landscape painted with iodine on his mutilated ass, then we understood that the medical staff of our department completely lost interest in him.

It is easy to say “Love thy neighbour as thyself”. As for us, this meaning is a bit different — “Leave us alone”. Unfortunately, for Vitya, this is absolutely inconceivable. Any normal person will be tired being for a while in the crowd, but not Vitya. Vitya cannot live without people. Demonstrating an astonishing searching activity as well as aggressiveness, he constantly looks for troubles. At war, this kind of behaviour gave him opportunity to do a high-quality “hunting” of enemies. Here, at the hospital, he already got us with his weirdness, and quite often he took his interest for communication outside of the hospital, to the local drunkards, sometimes forgetting who he is and where he is. His brain flames like a fire and finding the answer to the question “why he lives”, no longer bothered him.

In such situations, Vitya can do any sort of stupidity driven by a conflict between his protesting inner consciousness and raging like a storm his armless body’s energy. When he disappears for a long time, we send Shiraz to find him.

Sergei and I were taken a couple times to the Bestuzhevskaya street, where a prosthetic plant is located, to try out artificial legs. We have already outlived the first shock after looking at our skin-denture prostheses. When you see the ugly design of twisted metal bands, rough leather and strapped laces, then you realize what you really lost. The hope that somebody can help you is dying; and, whilst it sounds cynical, the main person whose interests must be a main priority, now is myself. This is why in such days I love to take trips to the city, this is the only way for me to get distracted. The view of the city from the bus window is very soothing.

Like all ill people, we think that the secret to solve our problems is contained in our recovery. This illusion is like a window glass: through the glass we can see the world, but this glass is also a prison wall that separates us from this world…

Lesha decided to learn how to play the guitar. The guitar was brought to him by the boys from his childhood street — Ligovka Court. Before the Soviet Army Day celebration, as a kind of honouring of this day, his left leg and right arm received a freedom from the plaster; only the rigid fix was left on the right leg; the left arm, as well as the whole chest, again was dressed in a plaster shirt. Now Lesha can sit.

Lesha celebrated the Soviet Army Day in his new milky-white armor, which we instantly painted and decorated with wishes, signatures and different army awards. The “Order of Survival” was presented personally by Vitya. He was trying so hard to embed a jubilee ruble cut in half into the wet plaster that we became seriously concerned that he could harm the weak breast of Lesha.

Lesha has three bullets in his chest in the collarbone wounds. He broke his legs when he fell into a mountain stream. His story is very sad.

Actually, like each of us have a sad story.

Being the senior in the group, Sergeant Lesha decided to take his subordinates to the village to do the New Year’s baksheesh hunting. They expropriated a lot, but before leaving this village the “people’s avengers” fiercely attacked them. Lesha was defending himself to the last bullet, but eventually lost his consciousness and felt down into a fast stream of the mountain river. Downstream, he was found the by our soldiers, who were smart enough to figure out, if the New Year’s presents — condoms, blocks of cigarettes — were floating in the river, then soon Father Christmas should appear…and he did. The temperature of cold water helped him not to bleed to death, and therefore a tiny bit of his life was left in this metal-stuffed body. His parents very often visit him and with each new day a taste for life is getting stronger in his body with every movement.

My next bunk neighbour is Serega who has very bad habits: he smokes and keeps silence a lot. His lazy disdain and melancholic displeasure is manifested in a loosely concealed desire to muck up… In short, his stubbornness and ambition won over, a senior nurse from our department who relaxed the smoking ban and, herself, brought him a personal ashtray. Serega was born in Alma-Ata. He lost two legs from a mine explosion. After heavy rains, a part of minefields, — already forgotten and not marked on any map, — together with landslide, slipped down from the hill. When Serega received the order to change the position of his post, he bravely walked on a slope — he was confident that there are no mines and never was — but his bravery left him after 15 steps. His partner was blown up into pieces when he was trying to drag Serega away from the mine, and himself accidently stepped on another mine. The pieces of his partner’s body were thrown at Serega and covered him completely. Now, Serega is covered from the top to the toes with bandages and plaster; he looks like a battered smoking four-engine plane that has one engine left with a mission to get somewhere.

A lack of opportunity to move independently invites boredom and the atmosphere of hopelessness that bring an ignorance and limited interest about our tomorrow. We wake up in the same room, the same window looms in our eyes, irritating us like the cloak of a matador. We are trapped in the cage of the present. There is no need to hurry — we have enough time: we have today and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow…

Everydayness is the curtain that hides us from the reality of our situation. We became slaves of our own weaknesses.

We quickly accumulate weariness from each other. We are impregnated with the passivity that has long become our usual state of mind; and this is more dangerous compared to the damage from Serega’s cigarettes or Vitya’s craziness. All of this looks like a terrible, unpleasant and insidious sickness. Resulting from our current situation, the causes of this disease are easy to determine. We ourselves understand very well: this disease is nothing but a consequence of our uncertainty and a fear of what will be tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will go home. Demobee!!! I tried to write about today, but I could not put down a single word. Only after a few painful hours the stream of something rude poured out from me. The details of our relationship in recent times are too nasty and humiliating.

We got tired of each other. It started before we were transferred to the fourth department of traumatology.

I am sick of Vitya’s conversations and his attempts to share each of his “little happiness” with everyone. I have changed my perception of life and now every day for me is only a day with a set of tasks. I do not take into my life anything superfluous, so in the future, I do not have to free myself from it.

Vitya is openly reposed to himself whilst we, Serega and I, knocked down our stumps to the blood, trying to overcome the first obstacle — the eighteen steps that separate the first floor of the hospital from the sidewalk. New boys from Afghan are constantly arriving at the hospital. From our ward, only Vitya and Lesha remain in the hospital.

After the treatment, Borya was cured and recognized as fit for drill. He got a vacation and went to his mum to gain strength. Due to skin problems, Serega was admitted to the day care hospital at the prosthetic plant. He had constant and persistent rubbing and irritation of his skin.

Lesha already moves independently in the hospital. I think, only his plaster shirt that still covers his arm and chest, keeps him from jumping over the fence. Our inscriptions on his plaster shirt have almost worn off. Only the chopped ruble from Vitya that was pasted with a super-glue taken from “Elektrosila” (a well-established heavy machinery plant during the Soviet era — Editor), shines as before. This piece of iron cannot be torn off from the Lesha’s plaster dress — it is forever there.

Shiraz left for the demobilization, leaving Vitya on his own with his problems. The circumstances forced Vitya to take the initiative and do something by himself; but we do not have enough patience to correct what he tries to do on his own. All they do is to point out his own mistakes to him, forgetting about Vitya’s victories and merits in the past. Vitya expects from us what he used to receive from Shiraz, who looked after him. But we know all Vitya’s wicked tricks, and try to reproduce them by ourselves, according to the saying “fight fire with fire”. He put on weight, almost every day got drunk before a night time; and constantly loses his artificial eye. Everyone got tired from his crazy snaps: the hospital’s deputy, the chief surgeon and ourselves. Vitya, shamelessly, ignores the challenges dealing with the fitting of a new prostheses. I understand him: indeed, two plastic hooks in black gloves are not a proper replacement for hands, as well as a set of hooks for carrying bags and holding a shovel is not a reason to be prided even for an ordinary man, not to mention a man like Vitya.

We are saying good bye to each other. Tomorrow, early in the morning, I have a flight. We exchanged addresses with Lesha and Serega. When I was writing my address into Vitya’s notebook, I said to him:” I do not take your address on purpose — you will write to me first, then I will reply to your letter. No letter to me — do not expect a letter from me”. We embraced each other. Vitya patted me on the back with his stumps, pressing his body against me. I shook his already shredded right stump.

I looked at the last page of my diary, and having read only a part of the daily records, it seems to me, that the filth accumulated in me over the years I had now lost. Why was I writing then in such a way? Was this presumptuous attempt of squeezing the most disgusting thoughts and feelings from oneself, an attempt to get rid of them forever? The endeavour of keeping up dairy records was, definitely, a desire to hide from depression.

I deceived myself, I wasted my energy. The diary pulled the most unpleasant thoughts and feelings from the depths of my soul. The diary is a mirror in which I saw myself. But, unlike a real mirror, it reflected my past and it was painful. I closed the diary…

I took the letter to check the address, which, I knew, could not be there. Covered with large round letters, the letter made me think and I realized that in thirty years I had repeated the same mistakes as done by myself in my twenties — I involuntarily acted in similar manner when life impressed me and when I faced any physical danger.

And yet, when I received this letter, I was not able to deal with the situation on time. I could not answer the letter. But I had no right not to do so. As for the new values in my life, well, where did I get them?

I imagined how Vitya, holding the handle in his mouth, displays neat, childlike round letters. How he waits for my answer and, finds any excuse for my silence. Now, my guilty conscience is a tax that I have to pay for trying to live free from the unfulfilled promises. But I want to be free and clean before my conscience. Compared to making mistakes and reiterate them, doing nothing and having remorse is much easier.